Community-Campus Partnerships

Definition
Tools and Resources
Web Links

Definition

Creating healthier communities and overcoming complex societal problems require collaborative solutions which bring communities and institutions together as equal partners and build upon the assets, strengths and capacities of each. Community-campus partnerships involve communities and higher educational institutions as partners, and may address such areas as health professions education (i.e., through service-learning), health care delivery, research (i.e., through community-based participatory research), community service, community-wide health improvement (i.e., through Healthy Communities initiatives), and community/economic development.

As a strategy, community-campus partnerships can contribute to a number of significant outcomes, including:

• Community-responsive, culturally competent health professionals
• Diversity of the health professional workforce
• Access to health care
• Access to technology
• Community development
• Environmental justice
• Economic development
• Engaged campuses and citizens

Tools and Resources

CCPH and our members have developed a number of tools and resources for community-campus partnerships. To view and print some of these materials, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.

• CCPH Principles of Partnership
• Achieving the Promise of Authentic Community-Higher Education Partnerships: Community Partners Speak Out! - Twenty-three experienced community partners from across the U.S. convened in April 2006 for a Community Partner Summit. This report includes the Summit proceedings and recommendations. For more information about the Summit and CCPH's ongoing community partner peer mentoring and advocacy activities, click here
• Community-Higher Education Partnerships: Community Perspectives - this annotated bibliography, primarily developed with community partners in mind, contains citations and abstracts for over 100 articles and reports.
• Achieving the Promise of Authentic Community-Higher Education Partnerships: Community Case Stories - These community-authored case stories provide diverse perspectives on community-higher education partnerships. An introduction offers suggestions for how these case stories can be used for developing and sustaining partnerships.
• Assessing the CCPH Principles of Partnership in a Community-Campus Partnership - authored by CCPH member Julie Bell-Elkins, Director, Office of Social Issues and Wellness, Framingham State College, as part of her 2002 doctoral dissertation, Case Study of a Successful Community-Campus Partnership: Changing the Environment Through Collaboration
• Case Study for the Principles of Partnership: Best Beginnings — A Child Abuse Prevention Program in New York City- authored by Anne Reiniger, CCPH Fellow, this case study used the CCPH Principles of Partnership to reflect on a successful 10-year old partnership's work and to identify the ingredients of a toolkit for other communities in developing community-campus partnerships.
• Community-University Partnerships: What Do We Know? - discussion document prepared for a national symposium cosponsored by CCPH and HUD's Office of University Partnerships in April 2003.
• Community-University Partnerships: Translating Evidence into Action - proceedings from a national symposium cosponsored by CCPH and HUD's Office of University Partnerships in April 2003.
• Bending The Ivory Tower: Communities, Health Departments And Academia - a March 2003 policy brief prepared by the Partnership for the Public's Health, highlights the rationale and strategies for community-campus partnerships in public health.
• Community Partnerships Toolkit - was developed by the WK Kellogg Foundation for building and maintaining partnerships to strengthen communities. Each of the ten tools in this kit was developed and tested by seven local organizations working in ten communities.
• Promoting Collaborations that Improve Health - a paper authored by Roz
  Lasker and colleagues for CCPH's April 2000 conference
• Building Communities: Stronger Communities and Stronger Universities - a paper authored by Loomis Mayfied for CCPH's April 2000 conference
• Community Involvement in Partnerships with Educational Institutions, Medical Centers, and Utility Companies - a 2001 paper prepared by the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives for the Annie E. Casey Foundation
• What Makes Partnerships Successful? - powerpoint presentation
• Community Partnership Evaluation Tool - authored by CCPH member Walid El Ansari, Oxford, United Kingdom
• An Instrument to Measure the Level of Community Participation in Community-based Health Initiatives: a Tool for Participatory Planning and Process Monitoring - developed by CCPH member Karen Lehman, Georgetown University
• Collaboration for a Change: Definitions, Decision-making models, Roles, and Collaboration Process Guide - authored by CCPH member Arthur T. Himmelman, 2002
• The North Carolina Public Health Initiative Authorship Guidelines - guidelines that partnerships can use to guide the authorship process, order of authorship, and acknowledgments. Submitted by CCPH member Eugenia Eng, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
• Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center Procedures for Dissemination-Related Activities - guidelines that partnerships can use to guide their dissemination-related activities. Submitted by CCPH member Robert McGranaghan, University of Michigan.
• The Community Impact Statement: A Tool for Creating Healthy Partnerships was developed by CCPH members Susan Gust and Cathy Jordan to guide early and ongoing conversations between community and campus partners to create health in a partnership as it is formed and the work to sustain it is undertaken.

Click here to view information about CCPH publications on community-campus partnerships.